Correction: Tea Party Tax Day Rally is scheduled for noon April 15th at Chicago's Daley Plaza
SPRINGFIELD - The Tea Party movement in Illinois has found a new reason to be up in arms. It's not as if Illinois' tax problem has evaporated, and it's not as if state and national government is cleaned up. They're not. But nothing draws moms' and dads' attention like an issue that hits close to home. Illinois Tea Party moms are now upset about what their kids are learning at school under the guise of a new standard curriculum called "Common Core."
The U.S. Department of Education describes the new Common Core academic standards thus: "Building on the excellent foundation of standards states have laid, the Common Core State Standards are the first step in providing our young people with a high-quality education. It should be clear to every student, parent, and teacher what the standards of success are in every school."
So why would parents be upset about a universal set of academic standards?
That's the same question that national educators asked in the late 1990s when the Goals 2000 national standards project. The benchmarks themselves became controversial. American history standards reflected a revised version of the nation's founding, science standards focused on environmentalism, math standards were low and intangible and health standards encouraged sexual experimentation.
Controversial, indeed.
Parents, teachers and administrators objected and despite Illinois' setting into place Goals 2000 benchmarks, little improved among Illinois public schools. While officials congratulated themselves for passing the uniform standards, they told taxpayers more funding was crucial if they wanted to fix things. Illinois saw no remarkable long term change in the level of academics statewide.
But the failure of Goals 2000 isn't stopping academic consortiums from trying once again, this time saying they are modernizing the state's 16 year old standards, plus updating technology to assess how well students are learning the Common Core. Testing will be done on computers, where, researchers say, students answers and assessments will accumulate into a database for the students' records.
The Illinois State Board of Education's Common Core website says Illinois is participating in a 22-state group to implement acceptable standards. The Partnership of Assessment for Readiness of College and Careers says states like Illinois have committed to building a K-12 assessment system that:
- Builds a pathway to college and career readiness for all students,
- Creates high-quality assessments that measure the full range of the Common Core State Standards,
- Supports educators in the classroom,
- Makes better use of technology in assessments, and
- Advances accountability at all levels.
That technology, Tea Party moms from all over Illinois said on a conference call Monday, is one facet of what bothers many of them with concerns about privacy intrusion. The Common Core curriculum was seed-funded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda. The more parents are learning about Common Core, the more parents are concerned that their children's education and school records will be taken over by corporations that have political agendas in opposition to their worldview.
The Tea Party moms and homeschool activists on the phone call Monday say they're preparing to talk to local civics groups about Common Core, and are launching an information campaign among lawmakers about the problems they see with Common Core.
"Common Core is to education what Obamacare is to health care," the new Stop Common Core Illinois Facebook page declares. The group also encourages people to attend the Chicago Tax Day protest at Daley Plaza next Monday, April 15th (ed. correction) where, Illinois Tea Party founder Denise Cattoni said, she plans to mention the problems with Common Core in her speech.
Illinois became a Common Core affiliate state in 2010 when it accepted federal funds through the Obama stimulus package. As with Obamacare, states are promised federal subsidies to get the program started, and questions remain as to how much and for how long those federal funds will continue to flow.
Tea Party moms are hoping to get Illinois lawmakers to reconsider the state's involvement with Common Core as is happening in state like Georgia, where teachers, administrators and parents are protesting the state's involvement.
Find out more about their efforts at Stop Common Core Illinois.
